RIP James Stull

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Jim Stull is a great man. He was a mayor of Brockport for 20 years. His physical body may have died but his spirit will continue to enrich us as long as we remember him.

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Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy - We are saved by a communion of saints

"Do you want to know how I believe we are saved?" my grandmother once asked me. "We aren't saved by Jesus's death on the cross. People believe that focus on hocus-pocus and avoid having to live out the teachings of Jesus. We are saved by every person in every time and place that has stood up for what is true in spite of threat. Like Socrates did. Like Jesus did. Like many others have done." We are saved by a communion of saints. They shelter us, and we have the opportunity to be in their number, here and now. p. 75 Rebecca Ann Parker in A House For Hope

Editor's note: Martin Luther King, Jr. and all the "saints" who worked and still work for civil rights are recognized, acknowledged, and celebrated today. Rebecca Ann Parker and John Buehrens are Unitarian Universalist theologians who wrote a book entitled "A House Of Hope: The Promise of Progressive Religion for the Twenty-first Century. There is a Unitarian Universalist church in Brockport, the Brockport Unitarian Universalist Fellowship where its members covenant together to promote and affirm seven principles of which the first one is the Inherent Worth And Dignity Of Every Person. BUUF needs your help and support in applying this principle to our lives together in Brockport, in New York State, in the United States of America, and around the world.

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Married white guys now the minority

Who speaks for America? Who are the privileged ones whose voices dominate? They used to be the married white guys, but no longer. In the last two elections, 2008 and 2012, married white guys lost and people of color and single women dominated. It's a new day in America. The Brockporter will be reporting on this trend over the next couple of weeks. The articles are tagged "white men are dinosaurs".

For example, according to sociological research done by the Environics Research Group in answer to the question "I often, or occasionally, feel I am more a citizen of the world than of my country" only 23% of married white guys over 35 said "yes" while 54% of blacks, 59% of unmarried people, 62% of people under 30, and 72% of Latinos said "yes". While they didn't measure for religious affiliation, I am hypothesizing that religious identification would find sharp differences as well. For example, one of the 7 prinicples of Unitarian Universalism is to covenant to affirm and promote the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.

With the rise of the global economy, the proliferation of electronic media, and the rise of human influenced climate change, planetary consciousness is the hallmark of the new age which young people will inherit from us old white guys. As the now old Jewish white guy, Bob Dylan, sang back in the 60s, "the times they are a changin".

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DWI watch - Albion woman arrested

On Friday, January 11, 2013, the Brockport Police Department arrested an Albion woman for DWI and may have saved lives in the Village of Brockport.

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Celebrating Martin Luther King day - Who Are You Called To Speak Up For?

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." - Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

This weekend as we remember Martin Luther King Jr., I am carrying his words with me. I’m grateful that I do have the opportunity to speak up on behalf of women, for the poor, for those in prison, for immigrants, for children, and for the environment. I know that at a certain point there are enough voices to make a difference; perhaps I will be that voice. Take a moment this weekend to remember Dr. King and to hear the passionate voice inside you. Who are you called to speak up for?

Rev. Mary Ramerman, Spiritus Christi, Rochester, NY

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King Street Stories - guns, STDs, languishing court case, and the semester break

It’s been a quiet week on King Street since the college is between semesters and the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night carousings are minimal. None the less there has been some disorder as Kevin reported that Marshall got the snot beat out of him last weekend in front of the Stoneyard grill by the canal by a bunch of Puerto Ricans. Kevin isn’t always the most reliable source, but gossip about Marshall’s other antics make the story somewhat believable. The part about the Puerto Ricans doesn’t ring quite true though because there don’t seem to be a lot of Puerto Ricans in Brockport.

            According to reports left in the comment section on The Brockporter a bunch of insecure Brockporters have rushed out to buy their Bushmasters and ammo for reasons that aren’t clear to more mentally healthy people, but those in the paranoid, tweaker fringe seem to think that guns are necessary to provide some sense of security in their threatening world. While the State government passed some stricter gun legislation with the exception of Brockport’s representatives, Senator Maziarz and Assemblyman Hawley, the legislators decided to keep it secret who the people are who have these guns. Apparently about 40% of Americans have guns. How many there are on King Street and surrounding blocks is unclear. With the drunken, rowdy behavior it’s a scary thought to think that some of these folks have lethal weapons in their houses. At 46 King Street there have been two home invasions in the last year, but the home owner there has no guns so the intruders are lucky they chose a pacifist to invade.

            Not watching much TV, it was delightful to catch Betty White’s Off Their Rockers and notice in between segments that some old folks were hanging banners off an expressway overpass that read “STD free since 1975.” I didn’t catch it at first, but when it sank in, I laughed heartily, and then realized that I have never had an STD. Is this a good thing or the sign of a sheltered life? I don’t know how many STDs there are on King Street, but knowing that 1/3 of sexually active high school females have Chlamydia I would guess that the STDs on King Street are near epidemic proportions.

            The Mayor’s case of Official Misconduct got postponed again until February, 2013. Having been arrested last March, 2012, Mayor Castaneda must be making her lawyer rich stringing out this adjudication almost a year and close to the end of her term which expires in June, 2013. Judge David Murante in the Ogden Town Court must be a most patient man to allow this case to meander through his court docket. Most folks seem to agree that Brockport deserved much better mayoral leadership than it has gotten the last 8 years from Castaneda and for 8 years before that from her mentor Mort Wexler. Between the two of them, they almost bankrupted the village and brought it to the brink of dissolution due to the advocacy of the slumlord cabal. The trustees: Hunsinger, Blair, Hanna, Blackman and Andrews have brought the village back from death’s door to some semblance of health. What will happen to the mayor at this point seems moot since she has done about all the harm she can do during her term of office as it winds down to expiration.

            The white guys in Brockport are still licking their wounds and buying their guns now that Romney has been defeated and the Muslin Kenyan is back in the white house for a second term. Maziarz and Hawley are the last remnants of the privileged white guys before the young women of color take over in Western New York. Even though it’s getting hotter, and we love our fracked gas, times they are a changing as the days of the privileged white male are over which spreads hope for the more progressive minded along the Erie Canal.

            And that’s how it’s been this week in Brockport where the white guys are scrambling to get their guns, the women who are better educated and more intelligent are slowly taking over, and the children are having to transform the messed up world they have been left so they can survive into the next century.

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Sun Magazine Discussion Group Monday, 01/21/13 at 6:30 PM at Lift Bridge

Interview with ethicist, Kathleen Dean Moore on Climate Change - "If Your House Is On Fire"

DeMocker: For Moral Ground you gathered testimony from political and cultural leaders about our moral obligations in the face of climate change. South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu wrote the foreword. President Barack Obama and Sheila Watt-Cloutier, former chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, made powerful arguments.

Moore: The strongest arguments in the book are the ones based on justice. Desmond Tutu writes with the moral authority of one who has worked steadfastly against apartheid. It’s unjust, he argues, for some people to bear the burden of others’ advantage. It’s unjust that people in Africa — who don’t reap the “benefits” of the reckless burning of fossil fuel — are suffering from droughts and crop shortages as a result of the West’s consumption of oil. He knows from experience that it is possible to bring down entrenched institutions. He says there should be worldwide outrage at the injustice of climate change, as there was against apartheid.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier identifies climate change as a form of cultural aggression — people of one culture destroying the material basis of another. We’ve seen this story before in the U.S., when settlers killed the buffalo in order to kill buffalo-hunting Native Americans. And we’re seeing it again as the rich nations create climatic conditions that are melting polar ice. Because the Inuit culture is based on a cold climate, Watt-Cloutier claims that her people have a right to ice. Those in the far north are suffering the most from the disrupted climate even as the effects spread to the rest of the globe. Climate change is damaging food supplies, spreading disease, and creating refugees, and it is poised to become the most massive human-rights violation the world has ever seen.

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